Volume 43, Number 11 · June 20, 1996
States of Emergency
By Hilary Mantel
A Fine Balance
by Rohinton Mistry
Knopf, 603 pp., $26.00
'Un roman est un miroir…' Stendhal said. 'A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.' Of course, not all novelists choose to carry mirrors of perfect clarity. Some travel with just a wicked sliver of glass, some strut along with a gleeful grin and a distorting mirror; others respectfully support a window-pane through which little is seen but the author's own face. But when Rohinton Mistry published his first novel, Such a Long Journey (1991), we seemed to have found an author who would carry a mirror for us down the dusty highways of India, through the jostling Bombay streets, behind compound walls and into the huts and houses where the millions sit, reinventing themselves, constantly reciting the stories of their own lives and times. His documentary realism won praise. The writing seemed a world away from Rushdie's aggressive surrealism and linguistic tricks. The prose was plain, the tone often jaunty. Human decency came shining through.
Review, 3349 words
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